Food from the Sky

This week I climbed up to the roof of Thornton’s Budgens supermarket in Crouch End, N.London, and discovered three fantastic enthusiastic volunteers gardening at ‘Food from the Sky’. If you want to improve your gardening knowledge and have some time you can spare, then what better way to learn than to volunteer.

The roof top scheme is the brainchild of Azule-Valerie Thome, and now employs an urban farmer, Jack Aspery (above), who directs the horticultural activities once a week, every Friday.

Ayako Tokumine volunteers on Wednesday mornings, every week from 10a.m-1p.m. and on Fridays too alongside Jack. She loves the gardening and feels she greatly benefits from Jack’s shared expertise. When not volunteering, Ayako translates English into Japanese and is interested in environmental and conservation science. She’s also researching insects that come to the roof and developing ideas for organic pest control.

Ed Brooker works as a personal tutor, but loves being involved with ‘Food from the sky’. He’s helping to develop a template to share with other growing projects, acting as a transferable model that other supermarkets could follow.

Vincent McGarry, a retired radio and TV journalist, really enjoys getting involved with the practical demands of roof gardening.

He’s helped build the bottle greenhouse, above, and is continuing to work on ideas to put a roof on the structure that will be able to withstand the elements at such a height.

At the moment, the lovely decorative mustard leaf ‘Green Frills’ is doing well inside the greenhouse,

alongside some Land Cress (Barbarea verna, above)

and some Winter Marvel lettuce.

There’s an impressive array of salad leaves growing merrily away outside the greenhouse for January too, such as Mibuna above, and all the salad leaves are harvested once a week in winter and sold in the supermarket below. How great is that! Areas are being prepared now for growing tomatoes and beans which will go on sale at Budgens later on in the year.

I feel I’ve learned a lot too from my brief visit to this amazing gardening space. At the moment I have a large amount of self-seeded Rocket at my allotment, aided by our incredibly mild winter this year. But seeing what has been achieved by the gardeners at ‘Food from the sky’ has really inspired me to plan ahead for plenty of late summer salad sowings, so that I too will be harvesting interesting and tasty leaves all winter long.

If you fancy volunteering at ‘Food from the sky’, sessions are on Wednesdays 10a.m.-1p.m. working with Azule, the first Saturday of every month from 10a.m.-3p.m. and Fridays 8a.m.-4p.m.working with Jack.

16 Responses

Gosh what an inspired solution for cutting food miles. I too will aim for huge quantities of winter salad next autumn. I only seem to have some ragged looking rocket and tough parsley currently. Seeing that abundance of salad leaves in an urban environment is awesome and demystifies the challenge instantly.

Hi Sue, yes, it’s a brilliant scheme and one that could easily be adopted on other roofs and forgotten corners. Hats off to Azule and her team! Just off to sow some seeds for micro greens indoors, but with the idea of planting for winter greens firmly stored in my memory for later in the year. V.best Naomi

Great idea and a wonderful learning opportunity for the volunteers. I hadn’t heard of it before and hope to find time to visit, perhaps going along with someone from our newly formed transition town. Really lovely post, Naomi.

What an amazing place. I love living in the countryside but sometimes feel envious of the community spirit that is so evident in lots of your posts. Maybe its because the lack of available growing space makes people appreciate the opportunities that are available to them. I think quite a lot of people in my village take for granted what they have on their doorsteps. It really frustrates me when I see the unloved allotment plots and think of people all over the country who would so love to have that space. I love the idea of using plastic bottles to provide some shelter. I’d like to give that a try, although my plot is quite exposed to westerly winds so it might end up in the Bristol Channel. Thanks for the inspirational post, Wellywoman

Caro-really worth a visit!
Wellywoman-I see unused gardens and allotments too in London, but hopefully gradually these spaces can be cultivated again, which would be a positive for everyone. Thinking of attempting to build a mini greenhouse using plastic bottles. Will let you know how I get on. Naomi

Hi Jono, Glad you enjoyed the post. I think it’s a great project and have hooked up with Aya (above) to plan with her for growing on her own balcony in my next post too.
Have grown Mibuna in the past and have just ordered some for this year. Just need to remember to do some late summer sowings to enjoy it next winter too! V.best Naomi

Amazing what sites you stumble on when you follow random links. I’m looking at permaculture and there is retired journo Vincent McGarry, a friend and colleague from half a lifetime ago. And we have both morphed into gardeners. Ain’t life grand.

Hello from FOOD from the SKY!
Some of you may be interested in ‘seed2seed’ – our foundation food growing course.
It starts on Saturday March 17th with a free taster session and then continues 1 Saturday per month thereafter. A fantastic opportunity to learn about food growing, with great speakers at an amazing venue!

[…] more hands-on course in London is the Seed2seed monthly foundation course in urban food growing at Food from the Sky on the rooftop of Budgens in Crouch End. Starting next week with a free taster course on March 17th […]